New options for building a free website

5:30 PM building, options, website No Comments

| By Michelle V. Rafter, MSN Money

Use these simple, low- or no-cost tools to build a personal page or site for your small business.

Still don’t have a website - what are you waiting for?

If you’re job hunting, work for yourself or run a small business, you’re at a distinct disadvantage without some kind of online presence -- and in some circles, you might as well not exist.

As of the end of June, close to 699 million websites were registered worldwide, according to Netcraft Ltd., a U.K. Internet research and services company. That month alone saw individuals or companies create 25.8 million new websites, according to the researcher.

In the Internet’s early days, building a site was a painstaking process that involved taking a class or reading a book to teach yourself HTML, the software code that web browsers recognize and display as pages of text and pictures. The other option was paying a web designer hundreds or thousands of dollars to do it for you, and then paying them more every time you needed updates.

Today you don’t need to know how to code, hire someone - or do much of anything, really - to create a website. Instead, you can call on a variety of online website building tools to do most of the heavy lifting. Best of all, many of them cost little or nothing, though some do require registering a domain name for your site, which could require an additional annual fee.

Some of these website builders help you create a professional-looking landing page that you can use in lieu of a resume or plain vanilla LinkedIn profile. Others help you build a more fully fleshed out website that you could use for marketing or for general business purposes.

Here’s a brief rundown of some popular options:

About.me: If all you need is an online business card, About.me might be just what you’re looking for. Sign up with the former AOL-owned service and you’ll get a single page that you can use to post a photo, bio, interests, what you do for work or other bits of personal data you’d like to share. You can also include social media buttons so people can find you on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like. About.me puts two relatively small ads promoting its service on each website, otherwise the pages are ad free. The company also has an app for Apple iOS devices that lets you use an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to create or edit your About.me page.

Cost: Free

Vizify: This relatively new service is a good option if you’re active on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Vizify pulls data from all your social media accounts and compiles them a single, eight-page interactive resume. Set up an account, follow the directions and you’ll end up with an infographic-heavy website that shows your location, education, work history, and more. My favorite part: it turns items from your Twitter feed into a 30-second multimedia slideshow. To see what the slideshow looks like, take a peek at mine: Michelle Rafter.

Cost: Free

Website Builder: If you want your own domain name -- so your website’s URL looks like www.MaryMiller.com or www.YourBusinessNameHere.com, for example, you might consider using a service like GoDaddy’s Website Builder. The Internet service provider offers a personal website package for $12 a year that includes a domain name, one email address, a website of up to five pages, use of 8,700 stock photos to make your site look pretty, a gigabyte of disk space and 150 GB of bandwidth, which controls how quickly pages on your site load onto a reader’s web browser. The service’s small business and Business Plus packages offer more pages, email address, storage and bandwidth.

Cost: $1 a month or $12 a year for personal site; $4.49 a month for small business site; and $7.49 a month for Business Plus site.

Wix: Started in 2006, Wix says it’s helped more than 35 million people in 190 countries build websites, with 45,000 new signups a day. The company’s free package includes several hundred design templates that one reviewer calls gorgeous. It also has a drag-and-drop editor for adding and moving elements around the pages. If the basic package isn’t enough, you can pay $4 a month or more for extra features such as a shopping cart app or for extra data storage and bandwidth, good if you’re using the site as an online store or are loading pages with videos or graphics. Free Wix websites carry the company’s ads, or you can upgrade to one of the premium services and the ads go away.

Cost: Varies, from a free bare-bones package to $19.90 a month or $194.04 a year for an ecommerce site suitable for a small business.

If you’re the DIY type who doesn’t mind doing some coding, you can build your own website. Check out how on this post from the tech website Lifehacker: How to Make a Web Site: The Complete Beginner’s Guide.

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Fed has slowed down some options such as world economic growth

1:30 PM economic, growth, options, slowed, world No Comments

For the first time in decades, the fed as a toothless tiger is looking for.

It is clear that is several wheels of the world economy in the unison brakes, pressure on the world's largest Central Bank spur growth Assembly. But with the cost of borrowing already at historic lows, it is far from clear whether further measures, which are cheaper to help on money.

"they have a hammer and they are looking for a nail," said Alan de Rose, Managing Director of the Government trade and finance at Oppenheimer, Reuters.

The Fed Committee meets policy setting next week amid reports that it may be in the close of fresh Act, to stimulate the weakening economy.

Companies concerned about the inclusion of new risk and households ends with struggling to meet new data you show this week on an ongoing slowdown in the United States

The Commerce Department estimate of second-quarter gross domestic product, due Friday, is expected that slowed down to show growth in the first three months of the year from 1.9 percent to 1.2 percent. The slowdown follows a series of monthly reports on a weakening labour market and show a stubbornly high unemployment rate.

Still, the impact of a deepening of the recession in Europe feel American companies. Surveys of Europe's private sector this week, showed that the contraction that began in weaker economies of the eurozone has now spread to Germany and France. In the 17 countries that use the euro, the production has fueled issue. Consumers are gloomy as it 2009 already.

As the European meltdown on the entire U.S. economy weighs, States are dependent on vulnerable heavily on exports, by the deepening crisis overseas.

If the reduced global credit markets in the fall of 2008, central banks around the world quickly exhausted they reliably have used the primary tool, for decades fight financial fires: slashing interest rates given for money directly to banks. Despite these efforts, the world economy into a nasty recession slipped.

Since the Fed has a number of new tools, including the purchase of some $2 trillion in bonds to lower prices on other forms of credit, see you mortgage deals. For a time those movements seemed to revive growth: gross domestic product and setting picked last year, and the housing market seemed stabilized have.

Despite a flurry of press reports of possible new moves, that is not expected fed to make fresh announcements before their next meeting two days policy next week. Even most of the measures under consideration have been tried already.

Buy more bonds could help, support to the financial markets, but would do little to spur lending. With interest rates at or near record low extending the promise, the extremely low prices on 2014 out by itself provided probably not for the promotion of businesses and consumers to take on more risk.

So, with the world economy slows, the Fed deeper in his Toolbox reached.

With borrowers on the sidelines are considering measures to try fed policy, the bankers make more money in the system slide prod. Such a move would be to reward banks that borrowed more loans, an idea to make a recent program launched by the Bank of England. Bernanke indicated to reporters in June that the Fed was considering the plan.

Another measure to the urge to move bankers make more money from their depots and again in the economy would mean cutting the interest rate the Fed pays financial institutions Park which keeps their money at the Central Bank, is that now lies at 0.25 per cent.

But no matter how many new, that they are trying moves, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has acknowledged that the impact of these measures will be limited. When he last week legislators faces of the Central Bank warned that major obstacles, their task of strong growth and stable prices that are beyond their control.

"Rest in the United States continue to by a number of other headwinds, including the still tight credit conditions for some businesses and households, and the restraining effects of fiscal policy and fiscal uncertainty, be withheld", Bernanke told a Senate Panel.

Translation: Businesses and consumers are still have a hard time for loan. And unless Congress and the White House, head of the emerging $600 billion "fiscal cliff" increased massive taxes and spending cuts, there is little the Central Bank can do to avert a further recession.

The Fed is not alone in its predicament.

Seems to be now locked in a coordinated slowdown with the world central banks around the world have been the system with money to businesses and consumers to borrow and spend prod floods.

But still, that the world economy will lose momentum. The downturn is most evident in Europe, where a deepening debt crisis weigh on business and consumer confidence and hammering of the banking system.

Like the American fight European Central bankers to push money into the economy. But deep Government spending cuts in Greece and Spain many households without content spend leave have. And in the middle of a debt-induced are a financial storm, companies and consumers across the continent to lend no desire. A closely watched European Central Bank survey showed Wednesday, that the demand for loans remains weak in the euro area.

In China show slowed rapidly, the forward movement of the last big economy. Although still is booming compared to the developed economies, try Chinese officials to control their emerging economies on a course, maintains the robust growth but avoid a ruinous run up prices.

After the adoption of measures last year to a new bubble to cool, Beijing moves now to resume growth. But these measures are likely to be too limited to help to revive the rest of the world economy.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Discussion about the State of U.S. markets and whether further Fed action is necessary, with CNBC Contributor Joe Lavorgna and Ron Insana and CNBC by Steve Liesman.

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BlackBerry squeezed, RIM searches for options

1:11 AM BlackBerry, options, searches, squeezed No Comments

Analysts were tripping over each other Friday to lower their price targets for Research In Motion (RIM) after the BlackBerry manufacturer's  fourth-quarter loss didn't even reach Wall Street's lowered expectations.

"Results are going to deteriorate much further over the next couple of quarters," Will Power, senior analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. told CNBC on Friday. 

With long-promised touchscreen handsets still months away from availability, executives at the former smartphone leader must decide if entering into a licensing deal will make up the shortfall.

New CEO Thorsten Heins said the company is considering any and all options on the table, including partnerships, an outright sale or a licensing pact, which analysts think is the most likely prospect.

"We see a licensing deal announced within the next 3 months," Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said in a recent research note, predicting a 90 percent probability that such a deal would take place. Samsung and HTC, both of which now rely heavily on Android devices, might welcome a competing platform, he suggested.

Licensing, though, would "devastate the hardware business" for RIM, Misek noted, which is the last thing the Waterloo, Ontario-based company needs. RIM is pinning its hopes on the release of BlackBerry 10, but Power said a dearth of third-party apps will make competing with Apple, Google and even Microsoft challenging. 

Without a cool touchscreen device to keep customers from defecting, the company has been slashing prices on its existing handsets. It still hasn't been able to boost sales.

On Thursday, RIM reported a net loss of $125 million, or 24 cents a share, in the fourth quarter after booking writedowns on its legacy BlackBerry 7 phones and goodwill.

RIM last recorded a loss under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2005, when it booked tax expenses and paid to resolve a patent infringement case that had threatened to shut down its U.S. operations.

On an adjusted basis excluding the writedowns, profit in the latest quarter more than halved to $418 million, or 80 cents a share, from $934 million, or $1.78, a year earlier. Revenue slumped to $4.19 billion from $5.56 billion.

Analysts, on average, had expected RIM to earn 81 cents a share on revenue of $4.54 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Excluding several major writedowns, RIM had adjusted earnings of $4.20 per share in the full fiscal year, after forecasting a year ago it would earn more than $7.50 a share. 

"Of even more concern, RIM took a $267 million inventory charge on its BlackBerry 7 sales only six months after that product family’s introduction, reflecting very poor demand," Simona Jankowski, Goldman Sachs analyst, wrote in a recent note. 

RIM's solution appears to be a re-emphasis on the corporate market and reducing its focus on consumers.

Although Apple has trounced RIM in the consumer market, analysts aren't sure that backing away from consumers is a good strategy; Apple has begun making inroads in the business market, too. Barclays Capital's Jeff Kvaal expressed reservations in a research note, pointing out that more companies today let employees use their own smartphones rather than issuing BlackBerries for corporate use. "We would have preferred RIM emphasize consumer," he wrote.

"The history of wireless is littered with OEMs that had significant product cycle/share gains, but then missed structural market shifts," Jim Suva, a Citigroup analyst, wrote.

With this many challenges facing RIM, Misek said licensing looks like an increasingly appealing choice. Its executives will have a hard time getting favorable terms, though, given the magnitude of its struggles and open expressions of doubt about the company's future from the investment community. "We see this as a good option for RIM but think the changing tactics and RIM's continued poor performance will weaken its negotiating position," he wrote. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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